


Hunting Season

by Balder12



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 04:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10071083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balder12/pseuds/Balder12
Summary: The Winchesters hunt a mysterious monster in the North Carolina mountains, but a previous case isn't done with them yet.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta, [Caranfindel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caranfindel/pseuds/caranfindel). You can see selecasharp's wonderful art [HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10071173). Please go view and comment!

 

It was amazing the damage one vampire could do.  Two weeks and six dead, in a nothing Georgia town that seldom saw one murder a year.  He’d had a thing for young lovers, this guy, posing them in each other’s arms like he was auditioning to be the case of the week on some shitty cop show.  Sam, delighted for a chance to show off his serial killer knowledge, had risen to the occasion and gotten his Clarice Starling on, talking about how the murder scenes reflected fixations imprinted on the killer in childhood, or God knows what.  Dean kind of tuned out after a while.    

Psychoanalysis hadn’t gotten them very far, but common sense had.  There’d been two dead on lover’s lane, two dead behind the bleachers at the local high school, and two dead in the arboretum, which Dean thought was about the least likely place in town to get laid, but which Sam had insisted was “romantic.”  There were a limited number of date night options in a small town, and they’d finally tracked the vampire down to a movie theater, where they found him slinking down the darkened aisles of a romantic comedy.  They’d chased him out into the lobby and behind the concession stand before Dean managed to get close enough to take a swing with his machete.  It was only afterward that he’d noticed there’d been a half-dozen witnesses to the kill.  A woman in front of the counter, spattered in blood spray, had screamed in horror at the severed head that had come to rest in the popcorn machine. 

Dean and Sam ran for the car and hauled ass out of town, checking the rear view mirror as the whine of police faded into the distance behind them.  Dean didn’t begin to relax until they took the exit onto the interstate. 

“Why are we headed north?” Sam asked after a few minutes spent listening to _Master of Puppets_ in increasingly confused silence.   

“You up for another hunt?” Dean knew he ought to be heading west, towards home, but he’d stumbled across another case too good to resist.  

Sam sighed.  “We just did two hunts back-to-back.  I thought we agreed we were going home after this.  Sleep in our own beds, pick up some fresh clothes, eat food that hasn’t been under a heat lamp.”

“What, you can’t take a few weeks of the life anymore, old man?”  Dean pulled up the news report on his phone.  “And you’re going to like this case, I promise.  It’s a weird one.  Five people in the North Carolina stretch of the Smoky Mountains turned up dead in the Cullasaja river over the last six months, looking like something’s been chewing on them.  Most recent one happened three days ago.  Two guys killed on a hike.  Third one says it was a bear, but the bite marks don’t match.”

“Werewolf?” Sam said, drawn in, in spite of himself.

Dean suppressed a smile.  “No, they still have their hearts.”

“Ghoul?” 

“No.  Only live victims, no graveyards dug up in the area.”

Sam considered.  “Mermaid?”

“No, it’s not a Disney movie.”

“Don’t be so smug,” Sam said. “There’s solid evidence of mermaids in the Men of Letters records.  “Anyway, how do we even know it’s our kind of thing?  The only witness said it was an animal attack.  Maybe he was wrong about it being a bear, but--”

“I’ve seen the autopsy reports,” Dean insisted.  “It’s no animal attack.  At least no animal that lives around here.”

“Fine, North Carolina,” Sam said, with a small shake of his head, like he couldn’t believe he was saying yes.  “But if it turns out we drove 200 miles out of our way after two hunts in a row to play animal control, we’re stopping at every farmer’s market between here and Kansas on the way back.”  

…

The sheriff was a gray-haired man with a budding set of jowls who still wore his class ring, and he was none too happy to see the FBI in his office.  He glared at the fire safety poster behind Dean’s left shoulder like it had personally wronged him the whole time he was running down the case.  William Yearford, the sheriff said, had been found on a dirt road just after dawn three days ago, rambling about the bear that took his friends, and a search of the river had confirmed his story.  It was consistent with what happened to the newlyweds who’d gone camping in March, and the kayaker in June.    

“Since when does the FBI care about a bear attack, anyway?” The sheriff asked when he was done. 

“Endangered Species Act,” Sam said smoothly.  “We believe there’s a chance it’s a species previously considered extinct, and it’s important that we humanely capture and study it.  We want to make sure no one around here gets it into his head to go hunt for it.  That would be highly illegal.  And might lead to a reallocation of government funds away from the county.”

The Sheriff looked back and forth between them, and Dean stared him down.  The last thing they needed was for news of these “animal” attacks to send a couple dozen would-be tough guys running around the woods trying to bag a trophy.  It would just put more civilians in harm’s way.

“Look, son,” the sheriff said, jabbing his pen in Sam’s direction, “I’ll do what I can to keep folks away from your special bear, so you feds can do whatever it is you need to do with it.  Take it out to dinner, give it a massage, I don’t care.  But it’s September 10, and that means we’re two weeks away from our tourist season.  If word gets out there’s a man-eating bear in the woods, all those people are going to take their vacation in Virginia.  You understand?  I need you boys to keep this operation quiet.”

“Yeah, don’t worry,” Dean said.  “Discretion’s our middle name.  Amity won’t need to close its beaches.”  Sam shot him a look, and Dean smiled back as he handed the sheriff “his” card.

“Do you think—“ Sam began as soon as they’d shut the door of the sheriff’s office.  He cut himself off at the sight of a deputy hovering by the front exit.  She was looking down, twisting her wedding ring slowly around her finger.   

“Good afternoon,” Dean said with all the good cheer he could muster as they walked past.  She seemed like she’d been waiting there for them.  She dropped her hands and looked up at them sharply, her mouth half open as if she were about to speak.

“Yeah, yeah it is,” she said flatly after a long moment, and walked back into the building with a determined stride. 

“She definitely knows something,” Dean said as they walked to the car. 

“She’s scared,” Sam agreed.  “Maybe we should follow up with her after we talk to Yearford.  I checked her name plate.  The Dubanowski residence shouldn’t be too hard to find in a town this size.”

Dean slid into the driver’s seat and casually batted Sam’s hand away from the radio.  He flipped through the stations, but found only a Christian rock station, two preachers, four country music stations and, inexplicably, NPR.  He turned it off. 

“They have both kinds of music here, Sammy.  Country _and_ Western.”

“Don’t be so judgmental,” Sam said.  “Some country music is pretty good, once you get used to it.”

Dean shook his head in an exaggerated gesture of disappointment.  “I don’t know how me and Dad managed to raise you so wrong.”

…

William Yearford’s house was well outside the quaint row of store fronts that passed for a downtown.  From the two-lane highway, the entryway to his neighborhood looked like little more than a side road leading into the woods.  There was a guard station staffed by an elderly man who waved them through immediately at the flash of a badge.  The road past the gate wound upward around the mountain among a dense forest, punctuated on the left by a row of widely spaced two story homes, and on the right by a perilous drop that no one had ever felt the need to fence off.

Yearford himself was a forty-something man in dockers, glasses, and a flannel shirt that might as well have still had the tag on it.  He was instantly suspicious when he realized the Winchesters were federal agents. 

“I told the sheriffs’ deputies everything I know,” he said, pacing the rough-hewn floorboards of his faux-rustic house.  There was a deer head staring at Dean from over the couch that he was pretty sure Yearford hadn’t shot.  “Why is the FBI interested in an animal attack, anyway?”

“Environmental protection,” Sam said.   “The animal may be endangered, and—“

“The FBI doesn’t handle environmental protection,” Yearford cut in.  “I’m a lawyer, you know.”

“As a lawyer, I guess you know two dead men is a big deal,” Dean said.  “And you’re the only one who can vouch it was an animal attack.  I’d start talking, if I were you.”

“The autopsies will prove it,” Yearford said, more to himself than to Dean.  “All right, fine.  I’ve got nothing to hide.  I’ll go through it again.”

“We appreciate any help you can give us,” Sam said in a conciliatory tone.  “We want to catch whatever killed your friends before it hurts someone else.”

“I don’t live here most of the year,” Yearford said, sitting down finally in one of the armchairs.  The Winchesters stood over him, the good cop and the bad cop, flanking the unlit fireplace.  “I work in  Charlotte, and I keep this as a vacation home.  Me, Mark, and David, we were all in the same fraternity back at Duke, and we got together here every fall—went hiking and kayaking, played cards, drank too much whiskey.  You know.  So, on Tuesday, we went on a day hike along a stretch of the Appalachian Trail, supposed to be four hours in, four hours back.  Except, Mark saw a side trail, and he wanted to go down it.  He was the most experienced outdoorsman of the three of us, and if he thought it was safe, then me and Dave figured it was safe too.  But after lunch we realized the trail we’d been following wasn’t a trail anymore, and we couldn’t find our way back.  The sun set on us out there, and we still didn’t know where we were.  Me and Dave were pretty pissed at Mark, I guess. We were yelling, and maybe we attracted something.  I don’t know.  But I know we started hearing it a little after dark.  Following behind us in the woods, a couple dozen yards back, I’d say, and big.”

Yearford studied his manicured nails like he was looking for dirt.  “We were walking single file and Dave was in the back.  Whatever was behind us was really doing a number on his head.  He kept asking us, ‘Do you hear that goddamn thing?” and saying it was getting closer.  Finally he said he was going to go try to scare it off, and ran into the woods before we could stop him.”

“We had flashlights,” Yearford said, interrupting himself.  “I forgot to tell you that.  Mark brought them.  At least he’d thought of that.  And we saw Dave’s go rolling right by our feet, still lit and everything, but we couldn’t see anything where he’d been.  And then he started screaming.  Mark had been at the front of the line.  He ran past me, and then he started screaming too.”

Yearford stared blankly at the neat stack of wood in the fireplace.  “I ran.  I ran until I couldn’t and then I walked.  I was lucky I made it to the road and got picked up.”

“So you just ditched your friends out there?”  Dean asked.  “Left them for bear bait?”  He had no patience for this bullshit would-be mountain man.

Yearford looked up at him.  “I could hear the sound of their bones breaking in its jaws.  There was no one left to save, so I saved myself.”

“You told the deputies it was a bear,” Sam said gently.  “You saw it?”

Yearford shook his head.  “Honestly?  I never looked back.  I didn’t want to see what it had done to them.  But it had to be a bear.  There’s nothing else around here that could do that to two grown men.”

They thanked Yearford for his time and left.  Dean didn’t feel like they’d learned a damn thing they hadn’t known back at the sheriff’s office.  Hell, maybe it _was_ a bear.    

On their way toward the gate a sheriff’s vehicle pulled in front of them, blocking their way.  Deputy Dubanowski got out of the driver’s side.  Dean and Sam got out too, and walked toward her. 

“What can we do for you, deputy?” Dean asked, putting on his friendliest tone.

“Not entirely sure I know,” she admitted.  “But I hoped I’d find the two of you out this way.”  She hesitated.  “You told the Sheriff you were out here looking for some kind of extinct animal.  What’s it look like, exactly?  What are we talking about?”

“We, uh, we’ve got a few possibilities we’re looking into,” Dean said.  “Any description would be incredibly helpful.”

She shook her head, but it wasn’t a ‘no.’  “Look, I need you two to know I’m not an incense and crystals kind of woman.  I don’t believe in bigfoot, little green men, or the Loch Ness Monster.  And I don’t drink.”

“We’re just looking for the truth,” Sam said.  “We’ve got an open mind.”

She smiled.  “Who are you, agent, Fox Mulder?”

“Anything you can tell us is important, no matter how crazy you think it sounds,” Dean assured her.

“You can’t tell this to anyone at the Sheriff’s Office.  They hear this and it’ll end my career.”  Dean and Sam both nodded in agreement, and she seemed to accept it.  “My husband and I went canoeing one weekend about a month back on the Cullasaja.  We were just coming around a bend in the river, and my husband had his head down, but I was looking straight ahead.”  She paused, seeming to struggle with how to word what she had to say next.  “Something was standing on the shore.  It was up on two legs, but it wasn’t a man.  Wasn’t any goddamn bear either.  It was . . .” she paused, eyeing them, like she was trying to gauge their reaction. 

“We believe you,” Dean said.  “We just want to help.”

“It had scales.”  She laughed a little.  “It was totally covered in green scales, and it had these yellow eyes, like the devil.  It was shaped like a man, but it wasn’t human.  And it wasn’t some high school kid playing a prank, either.  The sun was as bright out as it is right now, and I was no more than forty feet away.  It wasn’t a costume.  I swear it looked right at me before it darted off into the woods.”

 

 

She looked back and forth between Sam and Dean, and seemed satisfied by what she saw in their faces.  “My husband didn’t believe me, of course.  He said the heat must’ve gotten to my head.  But I know what I saw.”

She pulled her wallet out of her back pocket and produced a neatly folded sheet of paper from the billfold.  She handed it to Dean.  It was a sketch of an impossibly tall, lanky humanoid, almost skeletal in build, with a gaping jack o’lantern mouth full of razor sharp teeth.   

“Thank you, deputy,” Sam said.  “You’ve done a huge service to our case.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said as she got back into her car.  “Seriously.  Don’t.”

  …     

The Winchesters rented a small, rundown cabin deep in the mountains.  “As near the Cullasaja river as possible,” Sam told the leasing agent.  It must once have been a vacation rental middle class families used to introduce their kids to the great outdoors, but it was obvious no one had bothered with the upkeep in years.  There wasn’t much to the place but a handful of threadbare chairs, two bedrooms stocked with mildewed sheets, and a rusty stove.  The dining room, such as it was, had a wood plank table and a couple of stools, lit by a clunky metal chandelier filled with cheap-looking electric candles.  It had a good view of the woods through a pair of sliding glass doors, though, and an empty corkboard on the back wall that seemed designed for vacation pictures.  By the time Dean came back from a beer run, Sam had pinned up photos and news clippings related to the case, with Deputy Dubanowski’s drawing prominently displayed at the top. 

“The serial killer schtick was last case, Manhunter,” Dean said, as he carried two beers into the dining room.    

“Sometimes it’s helpful to see everything laid out.” Sam gazed at his creepy crime collage with the undeniable pride of a kid with a ribbon-winning science project.  “And I’ve got a theory.”

He brought his iPad over to where Dean was seated at the dining room table, and showed him a drawing of a reptilian creature much like the one made by Dubanowski.  “Adroanzi.  A humanoid reptilian that lives near rivers.  Sound familiar?  It follows its victims through the woods after dark, making noise, but never coming in for the kill until they look behind them and see it.”

Dean considered.  “That would explain why it didn’t kill Yearford.  Son of a bitch didn’t even look back to see what happened to his friends, he just ran.  But why didn’t it kill Dubanowski then?  She saw it.”

“But she didn’t look behind her,” Sam said, tapping his finger eagerly against the edge of the tablet.  “It just happened into her line of sight.  From everything I’ve found, it seems to be bound by the rules of its nature.  It can’t attack during the day, and it can’t come in for the kill unless you look behind you.”

“Anything on how we kill it?”

“Standard dismemberment seems effective.  I say we head out first thing tomorrow morning and get the lay of the land.  Maybe lay out some markers so we don’t get turned around in the dark.”

“Shouldn’t be a hard kill if it can’t attack us,” Dean said. “Come nightfall one of us gets it to stalk him, and leads it forward right into the other’s knife.”  Dean raised his beer in salute:  “Cakewalk.”

…

At 2am the sound of glass breaking woke Dean from a dead sleep.  Dean tucked the gun under his pillow into the waistband of the jeans he’d been sleeping in, and slipped out the door of his bedroom, still barefoot.  He nearly slammed into Sam, who was running down the hall in sweatpants and an unbuttoned flannel shirt, brandishing a shotgun. Dean nodded toward the dining room, where the sound had come from, and they moved toward it together. 

The sliding glass doors had been shattered inward from top to bottom, and dead leaves were skittering across the cabin floor.  Sam and Dean stood in the entryway, peering into the darkness of the woods and the even more impenetrable darkness of the room itself.  It was impossible to see what was hiding in the corners.  Dean flipped the light switch.  The room lit up, and the woods disappeared into blackness. There was nothing there.

A rapid patter of footsteps ran down the hall behind them.  It sounded lighter than Dean would’ve imagined for a creature so big.  He almost wheeled around to confront it before Sam laid a hand on his shoulder and stopped him.  Of course.  Neither of them could turn around.  That was death.   

He and Sam faced forward and listened to its movements.  It slammed against the front door and barreled out into the woods.  As soon as it was no longer behind them the Winchesters flew into action, tugging on their boots so they could pursue it. 

Sam thrust a machete into Dean’s hand, and it dawned on him that in their sleepy confusion they’d both grabbed the least useful weapon possible.  The adroanzi needed to be dismembered; a gun was worthless.  Sam almost made it to the door before Dean hissed, “flashlight!” and threw one to him.  He grabbed the other for himself and pulled a jacket on over his t-shirt as he followed Sam outside. 

They both stopped in front of the cabin and listened in the dark, their flashlights illuminating nothing but tree trunks.  The woods were silent except for the rustle of the wind.  Then they heard it, the sharp crunch of leaves a few dozen yards into the woods.  It was in front of them now.  If the lore was right, it couldn’t attack when they approached it from this direction.  Perfect. 

Sam signaled he was flanking right, so Dean flanked left.  He heard the monster racing ahead, remarkably nimble through the underbrush.  He wasn’t so sure they were going to be able to run it down.  When it broke left Dean went with it, veering off down a ravine and through a creek.

Dean finally stopped several minutes later, unable to run further without catching his breath.  He heard the monster’s footsteps draw further away and disappear into the distance ahead as he panted.  When he looked to the right he didn’t see Sam’s flashlight.

“Sam?” Dean called out.  No answer.  He tried again, waving the beam of his own flashlight in all directions, but still got nothing.  Sam probably lost track of him when he went down the ravine.  The drop would’ve hidden Dean’s flashlight.  Dean pictured his phone sitting on the stand by his bed. 

“Fuck,” he said under his breath. 

He was about to turn around and hope he could find his way back to the cabin when he heard the slow, steady crunch of footsteps behind him.  The lower branches cracked as if something were pushing through them.  It had to be eight feet, easy.  A dozen yards away from Dean’s back the footsteps stopped.  Dean played his flashlight toward the ground and waited.  There was nothing to hear but the pounding of his heart. 

How the hell had the adroanzi circled around and gotten behind him so fast?  Unless, of course, they hadn’t been chasing it in the first place.  There was no guarantee the footsteps they’d heard in the woods were the same ones they’d heard inside the cabin.  It suddenly felt sickeningly plausible that they’d run themselves ragged trying to catch a deer.

“Sam!” Dean called again, and the sound came out somewhere between a shout and a croak.  His throat was tight with the thought of the creature behind him.  The woods seemed to swallow his voice.  There was no turning around now, even if he’d been sure he could find his way back to the cabin.  His best option was to walk slowly, and hope for Sam or sunrise. 

Dean began to walk, newly aware of the small circle of forest illuminated by his flashlight, and the depth of the darkness beyond it.  The adroanzi walked dutifully behind him, mimicking his slow, deliberate pace.  All Dean’s instincts screamed at him to turn and fight it, but he knew his instincts were wrong.  As long as he didn’t look back, he was entirely safe.  Probably.  Assuming Sam was right about the lore, which it seemed like he was.  The adroanzi obviously knew Dean was there, and that he was alone, but it had made no move to attack.

Dean called out for Sam every few minutes for what must have been an hour, but he got no reply.  Small animals scuttled away from the beam of his flashlight in the dark, but nothing else offered signs of life, and there were no markers to tell him whether he was drawing closer to the highway or only taking himself further into the wilderness.  Stretches of slippery rocks leading downward occasionally forced him to crabwalk across them, cautiously seeking secure footing at every step before he shifted his weight.  Had the adroanzi been so inclined, it would have been the perfect opportunity to give Dean a shove and send him on a bone-cracking fall, but it made no move to catch up with him.  Instead it waited its turn, and then navigated the rocks in the same slow, steady pace it used for everything else, apparently untroubled by the terrain.

Dean was on a level stretch of ground, seeking with his flashlight for some clue to a path, when he heard a second set of footsteps coming at him from the right.  It was smaller than the adroanzi, and faster.

“Sam!”  No response.    

Dean pulled his machete as the rustle in the bushes rushed toward him.  A woman ran into the beam of his flashlight, and Dean caught himself an instant before he cut her head off.  She froze with the blade at her throat, and Dean warily lowered his hand.

“What the hell, lady?” Dean shouted, his heart hammering.  “You can’t just come running out of the woods like that at a guy.  I almost killed you!”

She held up her hands, and her eyes remained fixed on the machete that was now at Dean’s side.  “Jesus, I’m sorry.  I’m sorry I scared you,” she said, speaking so fast her words ran together in a blur of panic.  “I need help.  I got lost and . . . what are you even doing out here?  Why do you have a knife?”

Dean looked her over, but she was just a woman.  Thirty-ish and petite, with short dark hair and tasteful makeup.  Not even remotely prepared for the woods.  Her jeans were all right, but her long-sleeved gray shirt was much too thin for the cold, and she was wearing sandals that would get her killed on any slippery ledge.  Dean put the machete back in his waistband and played the light away from her face.   

“I’m a hunter,” Dean said.  It was true enough.  “I got separated from my partner.”  He hesitated, trying to think of a way to explain the situation that wouldn’t make her think he’d escaped from the local nuthouse.  “There’s a bear out here, and I think it’s following me.  It might follow you too, now that it’s got your scent.  It’s probably a good idea for us to stick together until we make it back to civilization.”

The woman nodded, still uneasy, but calm now.  “I know.  I mean, I heard it too.  There’s been  something behind me on and off for the last hour, and it sounds big.  Do you think there could be more than one of them?”

Dean sure as hell hoped not.  “I don’t know.  But the thing about bears is—“ Dean realized he knew zero things about bears—“they don’t attack unprovoked,” he said finally.  “If we stay cool, we should be okay.  And I’d suggest you keep your eyes on your feet, so you don’t slip and take a one-way ride down the mountain.  Those shoes aren’t meant for hiking.”  With any luck that would keep her from turning around. 

The woman followed his suggestion, watching as her feet found their way among the slick clay and wet drifts of fallen leaves.  She seemed to have recovered from her panic remarkably fast.  “What’s your name?”  Dean asked.  “And what are you doing out here, anyway?”

“Allison.  I was camping with my little sister,” she said, eyes still on her shoes.  “It’s not really my thing, but it was her birthday, so I said yes.  I was, uh, answering the call of nature, and when I tried to go back to the tent, it wasn’t there.  I must’ve gotten turned around, but I couldn’t have gone more than 20 or 30 feet, and she’d built a fire.  I don’t know how a whole campsite could just disappear.”

“It’s easy to get confused out here at night,” Dean said, but it reminded him of how he’d lost Sam.  Was it possible for an adroanzi to shift the landscape?  The lore hadn’t mentioned anything like that. 

She stole a glance at him.  “What about you?  What happened with you and your partner?”

“My brother, actually.”  Dean wondered if that sounded like a lie, after she’d said she was out here with her sister.  How far was any woman likely to trust some weirdo she found in the woods who introduced himself by holding a machete to her throat?  “We were hunting the . . . the _bear_ , and we split up when we shouldn’t have.  I’ve been calling his name for the last hour, but he hasn’t answered me.  I’m sure he’ll show up eventually, though.  Your sister, too.  Little brothers and sisters, they’re a real pain in the ass, huh?”

She smiled in response but kept her head down, studying the tiny sliver of terrain Dean’s flashlight revealed in front of them.  Two inches beyond its glow there could be a drop to hell and they’d never know.  Fucking nature.  Dean had the feeling the mountain was more likely to kill them than the adroanzi.  At least the monster was predictable.      

“Shouldn’t you be wearing an orange vest or something?” the woman asked after a few minutes of silence.  “I didn’t even think hunting was allowed around here this time of year.”

“Probably.  Let’s say maybe I’m not exactly following the letter of the law.”  She looked up at him, and her dark eyes felt familiar on his face.  He suddenly knew with absolute certainty that he’d seen her somewhere before. 

“Did I meet you in town?” he asked.

“No,” she said.  “I’m from New Hampshire.” 

Dean let the flashlight fall across her.  The memory felt like a forgotten word, stuck on the tip of his tongue.  He was reaching discreetly for the machete tucked into his waistband when she stepped backward, out of the beam of light.

“Hey, lady, _Allison_ , it’s a good idea to stay where I can see you.  You never know what’s—“

An arm wrapped around his neck like a steel band, and a row of razor sharp teeth bit into his neck.  His first reflex was to turn and fight, and caught himself just before he made a fatal mistake.  Turning would bring the adroanzi down on him, and he was in no position to fight two monsters at once. 

Instead, Dean threw himself down face-first.  He had the machete in his right hand and the flashlight in his left, and he had to choose in an instant which one he wanted to keep if he was going to catch himself.  The flashlight rolled away.  He heard it smack against the rocks a half dozen times on its way down, the bulb briefly illuminating the walls of a ravine before it shattered.  He rolled, bringing the woman under the weight of his body, and raised the blade over his head to bring it down on her.  Her strength was shocking, though, and in an instant he was shoved away, rolling through the leaves, and she was gone. 

Fuck.  He held tight to the machete and scrambled to his feet.

He couldn’t see anything except the moon overhead and the faintest outline of the trees around him.  He might as well have been blind, for all the good it did him.  He swung the machete in front of him, and as far behind him as he could reach without turning around, but he didn’t hit a damn thing.  He could feel a warm trickle of blood running down his neck and soaking into his shirt, where it gradually turned cool and sticky against his skin.  Not the death spray of an artery, thank God, but a slow, steady flow that ran sluggishly over his fingers when he pressed his hand against the wound.  Great, just great.  How the hell was he supposed to make it to the hospital to get it stitched up?  He was lost in the woods, bleeding out slowly.  And worst of all, he knew now where he’d seen Allison, and it wasn’t in town.  He remembered her dazed expression as she stood there in the movie theater lobby, her face spattered with blood, gazing down at the severed head in the popcorn.          

“Hello?”  Dean said.  What a stupid thing to say.  Like any monster hanging around out there in the dark was going to answer.       

“Hello,” Allison said from somewhere just behind him.  Dean used the machete to take a swipe behind his back as best he could, but hit nothing.  He wasn’t surprised.  The voice seemed to come from somewhere just beyond arm’s reach. 

“You’re hurt,” she said casually.  “You’re bleeding to death.”

Dean held the handle of the machete so hard his fingers ached.  “I’ll be all right.  Come closer and get a good look, why don’t you?” 

“No, I don’t think so,” Allison said.  She sounded amused.   

Dean took a step forward and nearly stumbled over something beneath his feet.  It was impossible to see properly in the dark, but he ran the toe of his boot across it, and he knew what it was.  Her sandals.

“I have found,” she said, her voice coming from an entirely different position than he expected, “that shoes make an unfortunate amount of noise.  I prefer to hunt barefoot when I can.”

“Awesome, I’m getting stalked by a hippie monster.”  Dean put his hand to his neck again.  There was less blood than before, but it hadn’t stopped.  Several yards behind him he heard a constant, heedless crunch of leaves in time with his steps.  It couldn’t possibly be coming from Allison.  The androanzi was still with them, its relentless pursuit undisturbed by the small drama that had just unfolded before it.

“You’re a vampire, aren’t you?” Dean asked, partly to know what he was dealing with, and partly to fix her position by making her talk.  “That guy we killed down in Georgia, he was a friend of yours?”

“A vampire,” she agreed.  “Yes, Gregory was a friend.  And a son, brother, and lover.  A human couldn’t understand what we had with each other.”

“Sounds romantic.”  He was still moving forward because he didn’t know what else to do.  In the absence of the flashlight his eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness, and the soft outline of rocks, hills, and distant trees had taken shape around him.  The majority of the world was still invisible, though, and he was keenly aware that any step could twist his ankle or send him plunging off a cliff.  Even the smallest fall could be fatal, if it gave Allison the chance to get on top of him.

“Sam!” he screamed.  No response.  “Sam, there’s a vampire behind me!”  If Sam turned up, Dean didn’t want him walking into a trap.  Not that it seemed to matter.  There was no movement in the forest around him. 

“He doesn’t hear you,” Allison said.  “And the adroanzi doesn’t care.”   She paused then, as if she expected Dean to express shock.  He didn’t.  “I know what you’re here to hunt.  I first encountered these creatures eons ago in Africa, and learned their rules.  It’s entirely indifferent to which of us wins our fight.”  

“Do you know how our ancestors hunted?” Allison asked after a minute of silence.  Her position had changed again.

“Do I care?”  Dean wanted to keep her talking, but he was also pissed.  His neck was throbbing dully in the cold air, and he felt the gray edge of light-headedness creeping in on his vision.  Goddamn vampires, always chewing on necks.

“You should,” she said.  “You’re a hunter yourself.”  She was nearby, but he couldn’t hear her steps over the steady thud of the adroanzi’s feet and the throb of his own heart.  “They’d wound an animal,” she went on when Dean didn’t answer, “and follow it across the plains for hours.  They’d stand back and watch it bleed out until it was too weak to put up a fight, and then finish it off.  No danger, just patience.  I admire their persistence.”

Dean didn’t bother to respond.  He felt his way forward cautiously, checking the area ahead with the tip of his toe before he took a step.  It occurred to him that he could stop where he was.  The adroanzi would never catch up to him, because that wasn’t its nature, and if Allison meant to attack she could do it whether he was walking or not.  If he managed to stay upright until dawn the adroanzi would leave, and the odds would be at least slightly more in his favor.  He pictured the three of them standing in a silent row together in the dark, waiting for him to finish dying, and decided to keep walking. 

“You’ll fall in a couple of hours,” Allison went on.  “I’ll take you then, and go find your brother myself, if I must.  I hope he gets here before that, though.  It’s why you’re still alive.  I’d like to kill him in front of you, the way you killed Gregory in front of me.”

Dean called out again for Sam, repeating the information that there was a vampire after him. No answer.  He couldn’t shake the image of Allison just behind him, smiling at his struggle. 

“So the whole serial killer schtick, was that you?  Send your boyfriend in to do your dirty work?”  As long as Dean kept Allison talking he’d know at least generally where she was.  And if he pissed her off enough to attack him again while he still had some fight left in him, well, that would be a nice bonus.

“No, that was Gregory.”  The answer came, inexplicably, from somewhere over Dean’s head.  He wondered if she’d taken to the trees, or if she could throw her voice.  “He was always sentimental.  He thought it was romantic, the two of us killing young lovers together, like we’d take all their fresh passion for each other into ourselves.  Personally, it’s the hunt I enjoy, not the victim, but you do what you can to keep the spark alive when you’ve been with someone so long.”

“That’s sweet,” Dean said.  “You two were a real role model for long-term relationships.”  There was still a heavy crunch among the leaves after every step Dean took. 

“Go to hell,” Allison said, but she sounded more tired than angry.  Her voice was at ground level again, and somewhere to his left.  “We saw the steam engine born and die.  I loved him more than you’ve ever loved anyone, and you took him away.  For what?  For justice?  Those children we killed were nothing but dull copies of their parents, who only existed to breed and create dull copies of themselves in turn.  They were the wallpaper of humanity.  History won’t miss them.”

Dean listened for Allison’s footfalls, but heard nothing.  If she made any sound a human could detect the adroanzi drowned her out.  It pushed constantly forward in time with Dean’s steps, never gaining or fading, with the dogged persistence of a nightmare.  It was the perfect cover.  

A rock broke away under Dean’s foot and clattered downward.  He froze, and gazed out into the impenetrable night.   Inches to his right the darkness took on a different texture, deeper and more absolute than the darkness elsewhere.  It had to be a drop off.  He felt dizzy suddenly, paralyzed by a light-headed nausea that pressed against the top of his head and threatened to send him plunging down into the void.  He touched his throat and winced in pain.  The blood there was still warm and slick against his skin.  He wasn’t going to faint.  He couldn’t.  He swallowed hard against the rising gorge in his throat and swayed in place.  If she attacked him now he doubted he’d be able to put up much of a fight.  He wondered how long it would take her to come in for the kill.    

He dared not stop now.  He dragged one foot in front of the other.  Slowly and painfully, he inched forward across the landscape.  He could swear the androanzi was louder now, and closer, nearly treading on the back of his heels as death drew in.  He wondered whether it fed like a buzzard.  It wouldn’t confront him while he was alive, but maybe when Allison was done with him it would pick over his bones for the tastiest morsels.  He gripped the handle of his machete tighter.  If she killed him, she wouldn’t walk away without something to remember him by. 

There was a moment of silence in the space that loomed behind Dean’s head.  No footsteps, no taunts. 

Then Allison gasped, and there was a sharp rattle of leaves as two bodies struggled. 

“Dean!”  It was Sam’s voice, only a few feet behind him.  “Don’t turn around!”  Sam collided with him as if he’d thrown his full weight forward, and Allison fell to the ground, facing backward.

The heavy crunch of footsteps behind them started again, coming at a run this time.   A dark figure stopped over Allison and she screamed.  There was a wet, ripping sound.

“Now!” Sam said, but Dean was already spinning on his heel, bringing the blade down on the writhing mass.  There wasn’t much of Allison’s head left in the glow of Sam’s flashlight except a chunky smear of dark color.  The creature on top of her glittered a greenish black, with spidery limbs far too long for its wasted frame.  Dean brought down his blade on it again and again, using the last of his strength to separate the head and limbs, until everything beneath him was a single gory mass.     

When Dean was done he stumbled over his own feet, completely drained.  He would have fallen face first into the monster hash beneath him if Sam hadn’t caught him around the waist and held him up.

“How’d you find me?” Dean asked, clinging to Sam’s arm to stay upright. 

“I heard you calling me, but I couldn’t answer you without tipping her off.  I followed all three of you in time with adroanzi’s footsteps until I caught up.” Sam played the flashlight across Dean’s face and neck.  “That’s a nasty bite.  I guess I didn’t need to worry she’d smell me with all that blood around.”

“Always happy to serve as bait,” Dean slurred. 

“Come on, it’s hospital time.”

“I’m fine.”  Dean slumped against Sam’s side.  Going to the hospital sounded exhausting.  “Can’t you just stitch me up?”

“Yeah, but I can’t give you a blood transfusion, and you’re obviously loopy.”

“You’re loopy,” Dean said against Sam’s shoulder. 

“See, you must be bad off.  That comeback doesn’t even make sense.”  Sam steered Dean back in the direction they’d come from. 

“All right, all right, hospital, but then home,” Dean said, as Sam half-carried him toward the cabin.

There was just enough light in the pre-dawn sky to see Sam smile.  “Sounds good to me.” 


End file.
